She couldn’t be so cold.
“Giovanni.” It’s Nico now. He’s stepped away from the others, talking to me in a low, comforting voice. “We’re not saying it for certain. We can’t prove a thing yet. We’re only showing you what we have because you need to know it all.”
He’s right. I need to know it all.
“Where do we find her?” I interrupt, quieting their theories. “Where would Leo Russo take her?”
“We don’t have that information yet,” Antonio says.
“Cristiano,” I say, forcing the focus back to the now. “Where is he?”
“Newark. Bayonne. Jersey City,” Nico says, counting options on his fingers. “He bounces. He likes the dockside restaurants that pretend they’re in Naples. He thinks it’s funny.”
“I bet I can make him laugh,” I say.
“Not you,” Luca says.
I turn my narrowed eyes at him, but before I can speak, he continues.
“I’m not shutting you out, Gio,” he says. “But we need him in one piece. If you break his face, he can’t answer questions.”
“So now I have less control than Vito?” I snap out.
“Hey,” Vito says, nearly offended. Then he shrugs. “I guess I earned that.”
“Vito finds him, gets answers,” Antonio says. “Then we move in. Get your answers.”
“What if you don’t like the answers?” Roberto says quietly. “Can you live with being wrong about this?”
“I’m not,” I say. “I can live with many things. Not that.”
A thick silence falls on the room.
Luca drags the chair back with a rough sound and sits, elbows on the wood, hands laced like prayer. “We carry both truths,” he says. “Until one falls off.”
“I don’t carry that second one,” I say.
“You don’t have a choice,” he returns.
Antonio’s phone rings. A few unintelligible words on the other end, then he hangs up. “We found Cristiano.”
Luca doesn’t bother to look at Vito. “Go,” he says only.
Vito smirks and walks out.
I look at the still of Bianca on the screen again. The camera loves her even when it doesn’t want to. She doesn’t pose. She just is.
That’s the part none of them have seen because none of them were in my kitchen when she let go, showed me herself. That’s the part they would use against me if they could.
“Whatever the reasons are,” I say, voice flat, “I’m going to find her and get the truth.”
No one speaks.
“No matter what.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
Bianca
